Prayer and the Sovereignty of God

Lately I have had some good conversations around the theology of the sovereignty of God and prayer. The Sovereignty of God is a term which means that all things are under God's rule and control, and that nothing happens without His direction or permission. God works not just some things but all things according to the counsel of His own will (see Eph. 1:11). His purposes are all-inclusive and never thwarted (see Isa. 46:11); nothing takes Him by surprise. The sovereignty of God is not merely that God has the power and right to govern all things, but that He does so, always and without exception. In other words, God is not merely sovereign de jure (in principle), but sovereign de facto (in practice).

People struggle with this, I struggle with this, because sometimes it seems like no one is in control of anything. But the Scriptural evidence is convincing: God is in control of everything that happens. There are a tone of issues that people have with this, and the reason for this post is not to address any of them accept how it relates to prayer. 

Someone said to me the other day: "If people are elect and predestined before the beginning of time to be Christians [Eph. 1.1-11; Rom. 9) what is the point of laboring to tell the world about Jesus, or even praying for people?" It is a great and weighty question - that needs both a complex and simple answer. Let me offer the thoughts of John Piper to answer both, a man who has written on, thought and preached more about this issue than any other, and who is thus disliked by many in the Christian world - but I think his thoughts here are worth sharing and at thinking about:

The assumption of the idea that prayer is pointless if God determines all things is that if prayer is to be effective at all man must have the power of self-determination. That is, all man's decisions must ultimately belong to himself, not God. For otherwise he is determined by God and all his decisions are really fixed in God's eternal counsel.

1. "Why pray for anyone's conversion if God has chosen before the foundation of the world who will be his sons?" A person in need of conversion is "dead in trespasses and sins" (Ephesians 2:1); he is "enslaved to sin" (Romans 6:17; John 8:34); "the god of this world has blinded his mind that he might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ" (II Corinthians. 4:4); his heart is hardened against God (Ephesians 4:18) so that he is hostile to God and in rebellion against God's will (Romans 8:7). 

Now I would like to turn the question back to my questioner: If you insist that this man must have the power of ultimate self-determination, what is the point of praying for him? What do you want God to do for Him? You can't ask that God overcome the man's rebellion, for rebellion is precisely what the man is now choosing, so that would mean God overcame his choice and took away his power of self-determination. But how can God save this man unless he act so as to change the man's heart from hard hostility to tender trust?

Will you pray that God enlighten his mind so that he truly see the beauty of Christ and believe? If you pray this, you are in effect asking God no longer to leave the determination of the man's will in his own power. You are asking God to do something within the man's mind (or heart) so that he will surely see and believe. That is, you are conceding that the ultimate determination of the man's decision to trust Christ is God's, not merely his.

What I am saying is that it is not the doctrine of God's sovereignty which thwarts prayer for the conversion of sinners. On the contrary, it is the unbiblical notion of self-determination which would consistently put an end to all prayers for the lost. Prayer is a request that God do something. But the only thing God can do to save a lost sinner is to overcome his resistance to God. If you insist that he retain his self-determination, then you are insisting that he remain without Christ. For "no one can come to Christ unless it is given him from the Father" (John 6:65,44).

PRAYERLESS vs. PRAYERFUL

Prayerless: I understand that you believe in the providence of God. Is that right?

Prayerful: Yes.

Prayerless: Does that mean you believe, like the Heidelberg Catechism says, that nothing comes about by chance but only by God's design and plan?

Prayerful: Yes, I believe that's what the Bible teaches.

Prayerless: Then why do you pray?

Prayerful: I don't see the problem. Why shouldn't we pray?

Prayerless: Well, if God ordains and controls everything, then what he plans from of old will come to pass, right?

Prayerful: Yes.

Prayerless: So it's going to come to pass whether you pray or not, right.

Prayerful: That depends on whether God ordained for it to come to pass in answer to prayer. If God predestined that something happen in answer to prayer, it won't happen without prayer.

Prayerless: Wait a minute, this is confusing. Are you saying that every answer to prayer is predestined or not?

Prayerful: Yes, it is. It's predestined as an answer to prayer.

Prayerless: So if the prayer doesn't happen, the answer doesn't happen?

Prayerful: That's right.

Prayerless: So the event is contingent on our praying for it to happen?

Prayerful: Yes. I take it that by contingent you mean prayer is a real reason that the event happens, and without the prayer the event would not happen.

Prayerless: Yes that's what I mean. But how can an event be contingent on my prayer and still be eternally fixed and predestined by God?

Prayerful: Because your prayer is as fixed as the predestined answer.

Prayerless: Explain.

Prayerful: It's not complicated. God providentially ordains all events. God never ordains an event without a cause. The cause is also an event. Therefore, the cause is also foreordained. So you cannot say that the event will happen if the cause doesn't because God has ordained otherwise. The event will happen if the cause happens.

Prayerless: So what you are saying is that answers to prayer are always ordained as effects of prayer which is one of the causes, and that God predestined the answer only as an effect of the cause.

Prayerful: That's right. And since both the cause and the effect are ordained together you can't say that the effect will happen even if the cause doesn't because God doesn't ordain effects without causes.

Prayerless: Can you give some illustrations?

Prayerful: Sure. If God predestines that I die of a bullet wound, then I will not die if no bullet is fired. If God predestines that I be healed by surgery, then if there is no surgery, I will not be healed. If God predestines heat to fill my home by fire in the furnace, then if there is no fire, there will be no heat. Would you say, "Since God predestines that the sun be bright, it will be bright whether there is fire in the sun or not"?

Prayerless: No.

Prayerful: I agree. Why not?

Prayerless: Because the brightness of the sun comes from the fire.

Prayerful: Right. That's the way I think about the answers to prayer. They are the brightness, and prayer is the fire. God has established the universe so that in larger measure it runs by prayer, the same way he has established brightness so that in larger measure it happens by fire. Doesn't that make sense?

Prayerless: I think it does.

Prayerful: Then let's stop thinking up problems and go with what the Scriptures say. Ask and you will receive. You have not because you ask not.

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The point here is that the preaching of the gospel, and the praying that empowers it forward are just as predestined as is the believing of the gospel because as Paul says: "we are co-laborers with God" (1 Cor. 3.9) - God invites us, demands us to join in the missio dei (the mission of God).

God has promised to respond to prayer, and his response is just as contingent upon our prayer as our prayer is in accordance with his will. "And this is the confidence which we have before Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us" (I John 5:14). When we don't know how to pray according to God's will but desire it earnestly, "the Spirit of God intercedes for us according to the will of God" (Romans 8:27).

I find great comfort in the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. The book of Revelation gives a great image of this. In chapter five when the lamb who was slain (Jesus) walks up to the one on the throne and takes the scroll of history in his hand. The readers are supposed to understand, that while the world around them looks chaotic, and everyone is questioning control. Things are not a they seem. There is a lamb holding, controlling and directing history - He is sovereign, and everything that happens, including the Fall of humankind, is in accordance with his will (Eph. 1.11). 

As many questions as this raises, in the end it is biblical, and it is comforting in times of struggle.

Blessings to all those who need to hear that God is sovereign. 

Benjamin Button on New Years Eve

It just dawned on me this morning; how ironic it was seeing Benjamin Button yesterday (Dec. 31). It is a movie all about time, growing old, regrets, forgiveness, life. Its is about the fact that a life is not summed up simply by adding up its number of years, so much more than just the ticking of time's clock, even the clock in the New Orleans train station which was deliberately set up to run backwards. The film is not meant to be believed in its scientific proposal that this could actually happen--though coming out on Christmas surely does allude to another amazing birth that defies science as well--it is meant as a metaphor for growing old and the tensions and struggles that come with it.

The movie really only has one gimmick, and that is Benjamin growing younger as everyone else grows older. It doesn't mean he lives longer than anyone else, it doesn't mean that is special in any ways beyond that--he doesn't invent something, meet presidents, or change history. It is a normal story of a life, love, pain, growing old, and of course one of its major themes is death. In the movie death is something that happens to all of us, its just a matter of time, and it is painful, but it is meant to be. As one character says to Benjamin "Death happens to those we love so we can appreciate how much they mean to us."

I felt that even bigger than the theme of death though was the theme of change. Throughout the movie the pain, struggle comes as a result of change--"Why does everything have to change, why can't it just stay just like this"; "I hate growing old"--things like that. Sentiments that are surely universal, and hit me hard. 

There is also the theme of forgiveness. People throughout the movie are encouraged to forgive those who wronged them: "Even if you are as mad as a mad dog, in the end you just have to let go"... Beautiful and true.

There are a few parallels here to Forrest Gump (same writer), but this movie is not trying to do the same thing at all. Where Forrest was a vehicle through which the audience experienced history, Button is a vehicle through which we are faced with the deepest questions of life, at the center of which is relationships. 

This is a good movie. Its long and could have been a little shorter but not much--maybe 15 mins--but its brilliantly executed from start to finish. Every frame is thought through and beautiful. In that way it reminded me of No Country for Old Men. You can just tell the director (David Fincher) casts a vision, and a team thought through every angle, color and background. I appreciate movies like this. 

Seeing this on New Years Eve was interesting; thinking about time, a clean slate, opportunities ahead, and ones missed in the past. It made me want to be a better husband, and better father. As I think about life and where its going my hope is that Jesus help me in doing what he himself commanded: to love God and love neighbor to the best of my ability to God's glory Matthew 22.37-39).

So rings true the words of Edith Lovejoy Pierce "We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them. The book is called Opportunity, its first chapter is New Year's Day."